1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a moving assist apparatus and a moving assist method which manage an application of a plurality of traveling modes of a vehicle, as well as a driving assist system.
2. Description of Related Art
As the vehicle comprising the plurality of traveling modes as described above, a hybrid vehicle using an internal combustion engine and an electric motor as a driving source is known. The hybrid vehicle has, as the plurality of traveling modes, a first mode (EV mode) in which EV traveling only using the electric motor and stopping the internal combustion engine while not maintaining a charge storage amount in a battery is given priority; a second mode (HV mode) in which HV traveling using the internal combustion engine and the electric motor while maintaining the charge storage amount in the battery is given priority; and the like. Further, a moving assist apparatus including a navigation system and the like mounted on the hybrid vehicle may provide assistance, such as calculating a traveling route from a current position to a destination based on map information, road traffic information and the like and selecting a traveling mode applied to each section of the traveling route. For example, an example of a vehicle control apparatus having such a moving assist function is described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JP 2009-12605 (JP 2009-12605).
In the vehicle control apparatus described in JP 2009-12605, a mode planning unit (traveling mode setting unit) of planning a traveling mode for each section of the traveling route and an information generation unit (average speed detection unit and the like) of generating information for planning the traveling mode are provided. The information generation unit is a unit of regenerating the information in a predetermined period. Further, the mode planning unit is a unit of replanning the traveling mode in a different predetermined period from that of the information generation unit, and when the information is regenerated by the information generation unit, updating, that is, replanning the traveling mode based on the regenerated information. Therefore, if the period of replanning the traveling mode by the mode planning unit is close in time to the period of generating information by the information generation unit, the interval according to which the mode planning unit replans the traveling mode is shortened, which sometimes may give discomfort to a driver.
In addition, this issue is a common problem in the apparatus and method of allocating traveling modes to a target vehicle including a plurality of traveling modes of different energy balances.